Conan The Survivarian

`Late Night' Host Is Enjoying A Good Laugh After An Unsteady Start

December 21, 1995|By Steve Johnson, Tribune Television Critic.

Conan O'Brien, Andy Richter and other key ingredients of their late night television show--lights, camera, writers--are packed in a rented van and heading east on Belmont Avenue. They are on their way to a restaurant they hope to make the butt of a nationally broadcast joke.

The air inside the van is thick with comedy, attempted comedy, insults and the intense camaraderie of people who have been to battle together and survived.

A cellular phone rings.

"It's Jeff Ross," guesses O'Brien, referring to "Late Night with Conan O'Brien's" well-coiffed producer, who's back at the hotel. "He's running low on conditioner. He's saying, `Oh, the soaps at the Four Seasons aren't as soft as I thought.' '

It's actually Jerry Springer's people, calling to confirm that the daytime talk host will meet the "Late Night" gang to videotape a bit starting at 9:30 that night.

"Let's get tattoos," says Richter, as the van passes a parlor for such.

The Chicago trip has a slightly giddy air to it. After two straight years of mostly lukewarm notices, the press has started to remark on a more confident and consistent show and host.

And after two straight years of predictions of his demise, O'Brien--who used to be famous for being obscure--has just received the longest contract extension of his tenuous television career, one that will give his show Mondays off and keep him on the air through next September. (Reruns of the show will air on Monday nights.)

It's hardly tenure, but previously NBC had mostly signaled its approval in even smaller dollops, renewing him here for 13 weeks, there for another 13.

"I'd be crazy if I said I was completely comfortable with that," O'Brien says later. "But it's like asking a ballplayer, `When you first replaced Willie Mays from complete obscurity, were you comfortable with the fact that you weren't sure whether you were going to get picked up for next season?'

"They're gonna wait and see because they can. Who's gonna give me a five-year deal? That would be crazy."

Still, the extra breathing room "helps on some subliminal level," O'Brien says. "There was a while there where I was really in a spot and now I'm not."

Going on location

Using the new time off on Monday for one of its intended purposes, he and crew have flown to Chicago to tape segments that will appear on Thursday's edition of the weeknightly show (11:30 p.m., WMAQ-Ch. 5).

Sidekick Richter, who learned improvisational comedy technique in Chicago, has spent the weekend showing O'Brien his old haunts.

They've visited bars, screamed insults from the van window toward the moving company where Richter used to load trucks, even talked their way into Richter's old apartment, where they ended up singing songs around the piano with the tenant and Springer.

"Then we made Jerry give a `final thought' (as Springer does in his show) about the whole thing," O'Brien says.

The restaurant joke, though, turns the old-familiar-places theme on its head. As Richter and O'Brien work out the sketch during the drive, O'Brien explains to him, "You say, `You know, there's one place I want to take you here for the best meal in town.' "

Twenty minutes later, they are videotaping the punchline. O'Brien and Richter sit across from each other at a tiny table in a bright room, gnawing at fried chicken available nationwide. On the window above them is an image of Colonel Sanders.

"This is great," O'Brien says of the 12 Extra Crispy pieces. "Is there any way we can ship this from Chicago?"

Outside on the street people are staring in. Some fail to recognize O'Brien, 32, a man whose angular Irish features render caricature nearly redundant. Others know him instantly and wonder what he's doing here, in a Kentucky Fried Chicken at the corner of Belmont and Broadway.

Those who remember September 1993 may wonder what he's still doing on television. O'Brien was the comedy writer to whom NBC handed the reins of David Letterman's "Late Night" after Johnny Carson announced his retirement, Jay Leno got the "Tonight Show" job and Letterman bolted for CBS. O'Brien was the 6-foot-4-inch afterthought amid the uproar.

"Conan was the 1,000-to-1 shot," says Rick Ludwin, NBC's senior vice president for late night. "But the thing that became obvious to us fairly early on was that whoever got the job of replacing David Letterman on NBC was going to be someone who had nothing to lose.

"We were talking to some established performers who didn't want to touch it, because it was just too daunting a prospect."

O'Brien, who had written for "Saturday Night Live" and "The Simpsons," was offered the head-writer's job on the new "Late Night." Because he had nothing to lose, he asked for a shot at hosting instead.